When Congress approved and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, it became the law of the land that the public business of the United States is the business of the American public.
Just because the FOIA had become the law, however, little immediately changed in the dominant culture of secrecy, self-serving, and cover-up that always and everywhere pervades bureaucracies, but especially the sprawling bureaucracy of the federal executive branch.
That suffocating and constantly expansive culture would only change when millions of individual citizens and activists (plus journalists devoted to “the public’s right to know”) made continuing use of the FOIA and insisted that the law be respected and followed, even if doing so required persistence and insistence to the point of hiring lawyers and heading into court.
When the authoritative history of the succeeding 56 years is written, one individual and the non-profit group he founded will stand out — Adam Andrzejewski and Open the Books. The reason why is captured in the OTB purpose, “Every Dime. Online. In Real Time,” and its standing invitation to “Join the Transparency Revolution.”
There are legions of advocacy and activism groups in America that raise hundreds of billions of dollars each year based on claims of working to make government better. But not one of them can match the monumental accomplishment of Andrzejewski and OTB.
Here’s why: transparency is the absolute prerequisite to accountability in government. That’s the ideal underlying the FOIA and the essential condition for the survival of a republican democracy. And knowing how the government is spending the tax dollars of its citizens is the necessary first step to achieving genuine and enduring accountability. That is where Andrzejewski and OTB excel as no other individual or group in America.
Here is how they explain it:
“At OpenTheBooks.com, we work hard to capture and post all disclosed spending at every level of government – federal, state, and local. In 2022, we filed 50,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and captured 25 million public employee pension and salary records.
“We also broke open the California state checkbook for the first time in American history. We are rapidly growing our data in all 50 states down to the municipal level. We won’t stop until we capture every dime taxed and spent by our government.”
Think about that: every dime, online, in real time. You want to know how much your federal government spends each year on legal fees? Go to OTB. You want to know how much your state government spends each year on computers and office furniture? Go to OTB. You want to know how much your municipal government is paying each its employees and retirees? Go to OTB.
The OTB web site is the open door to access a phenomenal repository of spending data on government at all levels, data that requires constant effort to obtain, verify, publish, analyze, and refresh.
But knowing who got how much for doing what is not just a matter of dollar signs and bottom lines. Consider the four most recent reports issued by OTB’s investigators and auditors:
- “Earmarks: The Return of the Swamp Creatures.” This analysis dug into the 7,509 earmarks worth more than $16 billion in that massive Omnibus Spending Bill last year. All of those earmarks are on an OTB pin map to enable anybody who wants to see comprehensive details on each and every one of them.
- “Improper Payments: At Least $528 Billion Wasted During the First Two Years of the Biden Administration.” Every year, federal bureaucrats issue checks to recipients who are dead, ineligible, or fraudsters. “Since 2004, 27 federal agencies have wasted $2.9 trillion (inflation adjusted to 2022) in improper spending, giving away tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year to people who shouldn’t have received it,” OTB reported.
- “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies.” The mission of the IRS is to collect taxes legitimately owed by citizens and corporations. So why did the federal tax agency need to spend “$21.3 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019? The agency stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition.”
- “Export-Import Bank: 2007 – 2021.” Did you know U.S. taxpayers handed Boeing Aerospace more than $66 billion during those years, via subsidies for foreign airlines to buy commercial jets and the maintenance parts and equipment required to keep them flying?
And there is so much more being churned out every day by OTB. Andrzejewski and every member of the OTB staff deserve a standing ovation from every American who cares about the future of this country.
By the way, just in case you wonder, I’ve never before been, am not now, and don’t ever expect to be an OTB employee or consultant, and nobody at OTB even knows this column is being written and published.
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